The Bookshop of Yesterdays

This is not a fake review written by a friend, acquaintance or paid reviewer. The protagonist of this book is a narcissistic, self-absorbed and extremely unlikeable young woman which makes it difficult for the reader to care a whit about her. The premise of the book is preposterous and so far fetched as to be laugh out loud ridiculous......which would be ok if it wasn’t so long, boring and tedious. Basically the protagonist spends the entire book trying to solve the riddle of why her Uncle Billy abandoned her at the age of 13 after a fight with her mother. I figured out the answer early on as it was fairly obvious.....but the the author would not hv been able to torture us with boring ridiculous supposed literary clues...oh come on now.....why didn’t her uncle Billy just tell her the truth in his first letter. I give the book one star because the beginning of the book describing the protagonist’s life back East and her history background showed some promise. But how any author can depict a school teacher frolicking in the surf in LA happy that she has finally found herself while simultaneously calling her school in Philadelphia and saying she won’t be back just a few weeks before school is to begin, leaving a class of third graders with no teacher, is beyond me. Narcissism reaches new levels in this truly awful book.

I really wanted to like this book, but its highly contrived plot just never caught my heart. The story begins with the death of Miranda’s uncle and the arrival of a mysterious package. The news of Billy’s death launches Miranda’s journey back to Los Angeles and the package launches the scavenger hunt that propels much of the plot. Most of the characters are two dimensional which it makes it hard to care about them. If you do not care about the characters, the secrets, lies, betrayals, and hurts are not devastating. If someone chose to tell me something important via a protracted scavenger hunt, I would be irritated and possibly insulted. I get it that Billy wanted to impart his news only if MIranda proved she really wanted to know, but really? Much that happens is expected from the relationship with Jay to the ultimate resolution of the great mystery with the resolution of the scavenger hunt. There are literary references and bookstore scenes that may interest readers, but that is enough to carry the story. I had hoped that this would be a charming, light, book perhaps with a touch of romance, but it was seriously short on charm and the romance had its issues as well. There are better books out there that follow a similar puzzle solving format.

What could be better than a novel that combines family drama and literary mystery? I found myself engrossed in the story and enthralled by the graceful writing. The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a moving tale that captures the turmoil of families while also offering a loving tribute to the quirky characters who inhabit books and bookstores. It's an impressive debut novel by a gifted author.

The Bookshop of Yesterdays had an interesting premise, but I deleted it and got a refund after long, angst-ridden descriptions and an F bomb on the second or third page. Not at all my cup of tea. I'll keep looking for better bookstore-centric books.

I am so upset I even spent $8.00 on this book. I struggled to read this book for over 2 weeks now. I almost never leave a book unfinished, but I have no desire to trudge through this mess of a book after figuring out the entire plot line in the first chapters. I do not understand why the author wrote what I thought to be an enduring story about such a self centered, self absorbed and annoying main character. Note to author if it’s going to be a heart string book the main character cannot suck as a person. I feel terrible I paidfor this book and decided last night that I am going to force myself to delete it from my library just so I don’t see it in my library anymore. I would not recommend renting this from the library let alone purchasing. I understand now why it was on Barnes and Noble Book Haul this month.......

When I started reading, I had expectations of how the story would go. The mark of a good book/story is that the story takes you to unexpected places, in unexpected ways. The quest is what keeps me reading. Although about books, a tale of family relationships, while never perfect, still family.

This book kept me reading. I love the premise and the literary references. It even has sparked my interest to read books I hadn’t read before. I’ve bought multiple copies to share with friends. I can’t wait to see what this author comes up with next!

I did enjoy this book. I did figure out the secret or whatever within the first couple of pages but whatever. The only real criticism that I can think of was...ok, I really enjoyed the characters and the ones who were supposed to frustrate you absolutely did lol. I just think the characters could have used a little bit more fleshing out. Just a bit. I know the lead character was on her own journey (of course) but a little more understanding of some of the supporting characters would have been nice too. That's it. Other than that TINY note, I did enjoy the story. I would and did recommend this to someone else.

WTF!!!I was hoping for another good book about a bookshop, but what i got was someone who thinks that completely rewriting the rules of punctuation is somehow a good thing.FYI Amy… Speech is defined in prose by quotation marks, not just simply put into italics. Italics in prose means something completely different. I’m not sure what Amy is trying to achieve with this but it’s utterly lost on me.It was utterly ridiculous trying to read this, there’s no hope of simply relaxing and just enjoying the story, you have to spend most of your attention deciphering the absolute lack of quotation marks and shambolic misuse of italics. Add to this that most of the start of the book is people saying things and one simply has no choice but to quickly delete the book from ones Kindle.Total waste of money. Thanks Amy. Go back to school and learn how to write before publishing books and taking people’s money.Deleted!

It took a while for me to really get into the book but once that happened I kept needing to read more. I was emotionally tied in to this book in a way I cannot explain without Spoilers, but it is beautifully written and the characters were easy to relate to. A great story.

Afraid this bored me and I didn’t feel connected or concerned about any of the characters . Persevered until the end but not my favourite read . Shame as idea had potential.

A little lovely little book. Perfect for book lovers

Light reading which kept me entertained. There were characters to like, to dislike.Sometimes, I felt a little frustrated with literary references I didn't understand but it didn't destroy my enjoyment of the book. For anyone who likes riddles solving riddles, the book is fun.